Re: distro or add-on?

[Darin Lang <darin@flashcom.net>]

on 4/20/01 7:12 PM, Jean Francois Martinez at jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:

> And while we are at it I would like to have Windows transfuges
> (specially if they learned unassisted) in the team because
> they know about the problems people face when
> they shift to Linux.

I have been lurking up till now, but I am here to help on that account. I
found Seul and Indy after failing to get Slackware Linux 7.1 running
completely last November. I spent about a month full time studying and
tweeking my GNU Linux, compiling and recompiling, trying to get it to work.
I had no experience with Linux prior to that whatsoever. I installed it as a
dual boot with Win98. I have never been able to get the sound card to work
in Linux. I am only able to print text and just setting that up took me
several days of study, it was a major difficulty. X windows was another
nightmare to configure, I even have the original manuals for my monitor, but
the data in the manual does not fit in the slot provided by X windows, the
data X wants is missing. I had to write my x86free config file by hand,
using the calculation how tos for X another confusing, obfuscated nightmare.
The auto option no matter how I did it did not work at all, period. It took
me most of a week to get X windows running, it still does not run properly,
and my monitor shifts and jitters a bit. I was able to get Apple Networking
running fine. And in fact I normally only access the Linux machine via
telnet from my Macintosh even though they are side by side. I have never
gotten the windows networking running. Samba says it is running and
intstalled properly, but I can't access the other PC on the Network. I did
get Apache running, with PHP, MySQL and Perl. I also have IP-Aliasing
running and can access several virtual web sites on my Linux Intranet Server
from every computer on the intranet.

    Accessing the CD drive is another confusing nightmare that took me
several hours to figure out even though both KDE and GNOME are supposed to
recognize it automatically. I had to issue commands at the prompt after
searching endlessly to find those commands.

    I gave up using it as a desktop. I mainly use it for web site
development and testing. I work entirely alone. I have no friends who know
anything about computers, so I learn entirely from books and newsgroups. As
a web server it is great, it can't be beat. The Gimp is outstanding superior
to standalone photoshap in many ways, but unable to compress graphics
sufficiently. I use it for it's incredible effects occasionally and then
transfer it over to the Mac to make it web ready. Emacs is another great
program. But I couldn't find a free software Office Suite with capability to
match M$ Office or even AppleWorks. Supposedly I can download one somewhere,
but I didn't see the point after all the other difficulties I had.

    Another particularly frustrating feature is file permissions. I am
constantly warned not to run as root, but I constantly have to switch back
to root to change a file permission so I can access it. I don't need
multiple users, I am the only one, it would be much easier to do away with
that. I still do not fully understand file permissions and I have never
found a thorough explanation of them anywhere, though I have found many
attempted explanations.

     I wish it was possible to replace Windows and Mac, it would be a great
accomplishment. Someday I imagine it will happen, but there is so much work
to do.  Overall I think it has a long way to go before your average person
can use it. It doesn't have the software I need as a webdeveloper
(Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Freehand, etc.), but the Mac
doesn't have PHP, Apache, MySQL and Perl either. Mac midi sucks, so I need a
PC for sound editing and midi. I wish there was one machine that could do it
all. 


FWIW,    
Darin Lang
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